Bookmarks: Marc Spitz, Laura Albert, Oregon Book Awards, Renata Adler

Marc Spitz is the author of two novels, biographies of Mick Jagger and David Bowie, a history of the L.A. punk scene, a bunch of plays and now a memoir, but he'll always be known as a prolific writer and editor for Spin magazine.

So what happened to Spin?

"I keep getting copies of Car and Driver," Spitz said during a recent visit to Portland. "I guess I'm a subscriber to that now. Obviously (Spin) is not being published anymore. It's a website now. It's over as we know it or becoming something else."

Spin ceased publication late last year and offered subscribers a refund or a switch to Car and Driver. The magazine was founded in 1985 by Bob Guccione Jr. and enjoyed some success as a scrappy alternative to Rolling Stone, covering indy rock and rap acts for a younger audience. Spitz spent a decade there and wrote more than a dozen cover stories in what turned out to be the tail end of long-form music journalism.

"Going on tour with bands, going on the bus, going to Australia or Sweden ... that was really the twilight of it," Spitz said. "People don't want that much information anymore. When I came up, I hero-worshipped people like Lester Bangs or Nick Kent, and I'm having a hard time writing for culture blogs."

In 2002 Spitz went to London for Spin to do a feature on Coldplay. Their album "A Rush of Blood to the Head" was about to be released and it was clear they were going to become the biggest band in the world. Against his usual taste, Spitz found that he liked Chris Martin and the rest of Coldplay and ran up a huge expense tab for an article that was reduced in size from the one Spitz turned in. Those were the days.

"It's a natural thing that happens, although at the time we couldn't conceive that what was happening would one day be kitsch. But, you know, every time you hear Wu-Tang Clan or Fat Boy Slim, the dance floor fills up."

Laura Albert, the author of the JT LeRoy books and the perpetrator of a literary hoax that ensnared a number of authors and celebrities, will be in Portland on Thursday for a fundraiser for p:ear. LeRoy supposedly was a prostitute and street hustler whose first book, "Sarah," was a sensation when it came out in 1999. Two other books, "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things" and "Harold's End," followed and LeRoy was credited as an associate producer for Gus Van Sant's "Elephant."

LeRoy made lots of long phone calls but appeared in public wearing a wig and sunglasses because of shyness. It turned out that the person pretending to be LeRoy was Savannah Knoop, the sister of Geoffrey Knoop, Albert's partner at the time. The hoax was revealed in the fall of 2005 and Albert was convicted of fraud in a dispute over a movie contract for "Sarah."

Portland writers Arthur Bradford and Monica Drake will read from the LeRoy books and Kevin Sampsell will interview Albert onstage. It should be a lively evening.

The Oregon Book Awards are April 8, and there's still time to vote for the reader's choice award, sponsored by The Oregonian and Literary Arts. Readers are invited to choose their favorite book from among the finalists for the awards; the book with the most votes will receive a special reader's choice award. Last year's winner was "The Chronology of Water" by Lidia Yuknavitch. Willy Vlautin's "Lean on Pete" won the first reader's choice award. Voting ends at 5 p.m. April 1.

Two novels by Renata Adler, "Speedboat" and "Pitch Dark," have been reissued by New York Review Books, which consistently reprints quality fiction and nonfiction. "Speedboat," first published in 1976, was reprinted after the National Book Critics Circle called for it to return to print in 2010. It won the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first novel. Like "Pitch Dark" (1983), it is written in first person and eschews a conventional narrative in favor of a series of short sections full of caustic observations and sketches that are fiercely intelligent and a pleasure to read.

NW Book Lovers, the website of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, is a good place to find essays by Northwest authors, bookseller news, and a Northwest best-seller list that usually tracks with national lists but has some local wrinkles. The most recent list, March 17, has Portland writer Amanda Coplin's "The Orchardist" at No. 1 in paperback fiction, followed by "The Snow Child," another fiction debut, this one by Alaska writer Eowyn Ivey. Cheryl Strayed's "Wild" and "Tiny Beautiful Things" are popular, and the No. 1 best-seller on the children's illustrated list is "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown, first published in 1947.

The Ledding Library of Milwaukie has two interesting series: Mike Richardson, the founder of Dark Horse Comics, speaks as part of the Ledding Cultural Forum at 7 p.m. April 4; and the Milwaukie Poetry Series continues with Steve Dieffenbacher at 7 p.m. April 10.